With few exceptions, foreign policy, especially in its highest echelons, is a man’s territory. But even in a realm governed by a formal rotation of masculine superegos, American foreign policy has never been in the hands of such a male id. Last week’s surprise announcement of a meeting by May between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un highlights, yet again, the perils of letting fragile male egos run the world. The prospect of the summit would be comic ― a Trey Parker and Matt Stone musical number ― were millions of lives, and perhaps ultimately the planet itself, not on the line………..

Diplomacy’s masculinity problem is nothing new, though every new Republican leader seems to inject it with fresh testosterone. Consider the Bush Doctrine, which arrived under cover of so much World Trade Center smoke. It sold two wars packaged in unequivocally masculine rhetoric, using the language of strength and dominance to distract from ― in the case of the Iraq War ― a lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction or of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. As analysts at the Brookings Institution described Bush’s aggressive “revolution” in foreign policy, “other countries will either follow or get out of the way.” But such rhetoric, and indeed a defense of American manhood itself, led us as surely into the Spanish American War more than a century earlier, according to historian Kristin Hoganson. Stunningly little has changed since that war began, in 1898. ……..

Of course, what makes our situation even more dangerous is that it’s not just Trump who is operating from a place of defensive masculinity. “From the outside, it is easy to underestimate how much of North Korea’s threats and bizarre expressions of aggression reflect its sense of vulnerability and wounded pride,” Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker this week. It’s essentially a therapist’s diagnosis of the pain underlying toxic manhood.

We now find ourselves at the mercy of two insecure grown-up boys pretending to be men, who might deploy defensive machismo by any nuclear means necessary. Each is led baldly by fear of failing to be the alpha male. And it’s a zero sum game: There’s only one alpha allowed. Who is going to rule the locker room? And who, when hazed, will punish the world for it? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-sandler-foreign-policy-trump

I wrote The Art of the Deal with Trump. He’s still a scared child, Guardian, Tony Schwartz 18 Jan 18, Trump is angrier and more self-absorbed than when I first knew him. We must not let his culture of fear stop us speaking out.

“I alone can do it.” These five extraordinary words kept coming back to me as I reflected on Donald Trump’s first year as president of the US. He made this claim during his speech accepting the Republican nomination in July 2016. At the time, it struck me simply as a delusional expression of his grandiosity. Looking back, I also hear the plaintive wail of a desperate child who believes he is alone in the world with no one to care for him. “I alone can do it” is Trump’s survival response to: “I must do it all alone.”

There are two Trumps. The one he presents to the world is all bluster, bullying and certainty. The other, which I have long felt haunts his inner world, is the frightened child of a relentlessly critical and bullying father and a distant and disengaged mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t protect him.

“That’s why I’m so screwed up, because I had a father who pushed me so hard,” Trump acknowledged in 2007, in a brief and rare moment of self-awareness.

Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age. He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed – assuming the last is possible.

This is the narrative I’ve been advancing for the past 18 months. With the recent publication of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, it turns out that even those closest to Trump recognise his utter lack of fitness to be president, even if they are too cowed and cowardly to do anything about it.

Fear is the hidden through-line in Trump’s life – fear of weakness, of inadequacy, of failure, of criticism and of insignificance. He has spent his life trying to outrun these fears by “winning” – as he puts it – and by redefining reality whenever the facts don’t serve the narrative he seeks to create. It hasn’t worked, but not for lack of effort…….

Trump has made fear the dominant emotion of our times. This, I believe, is his primary impact on the body politic after a year in office……..

Trump skilfully exploited the fears of supporters who felt powerless and disenfranchised by presenting himself as their angry champion, even though the policies he has since pursued are likely to make their lives worse.

About the only thing Trump truly has in common with his base is that he feels every bit as aggrieved as they do, despite his endless privilege…….

If fear gets sufficiently intense, or persists for long enough, we eventually move into “freeze” – meaning numbness and submission. This is my own greatest fear. As Trump violates one norm after another day after day, the risk is that we lose our sense of outrage and our motivation to speak out.

The challenge we face is to resist our own fear without sacrificing our outrage. That requires widening our perspective beyond Trump’s, and beyond Trump himself. The future is ours to shape, not his. ……….

Trump himself has become the embodiment of the limits of traditional masculinity. “We raise boys,” writes the author Terrence Real, “to live in a world in which they are either winners or losers, grandiose or shame-filled, … perpetrators or victims. Society shows little mercy for men if they fail in the performance of their role. But the price of that performance is an inward sickness.”

As talks of military confrontation between the US and North Korea continue to escalate, Today Show host Matt Lauer raised an incredible question: What if White House officials really did have to physically stop President Donald Trump from starting a nuclear war?

As ridiculous as the idea may seem, there have been reports circulating in which WH aides suggest that Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis may have formulated a plot to physically apprehend Trump before he reaches the nuclear football.

These reports inspired Lauer to ask Brennan the following:

“I feel weird asking you this, but you’ve read the same stories I’ve read. You know the key players around the president in Mattis, Mcmaster and John Kelly. Stories are going around out there that if the president inches closer to some kind of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea, that those guys are going to do something. They’re going to lock him in a room. They’re going to tackle him. You’re smiling. But these are the stories that are out there. And they will prevent him from carrying out any action that would cause that. Is that all nonsense?”

Despite the preposterous, slapstick image that Lauer’s question conjures up — Kelly or Mattis leaping like an NFL safety at Trump while he’s mid-nuclear launch — the always professional Brennan calmly clarified that the president alone has “unilateral authority” on military action. The former CIA director said Mattis’ options for protest include trying to talk the president out of it or tendering his resignation — the possibility of tackling Trump was not a listed option, though.

When asked whether or not he would follow unethical orders from his authorities, Brennan said that in certain cases — such as a command to bring back waterboarding — he would choose getting fired over following directives.

As for the Mattis, Kelly, and H.R. McMaster, Brennan commended all of them, saying, “They’re patriots… They understand the gravity of this situation, and I don’t think Trump does.”

Dr. Lance Dodes is one of 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts who came together to give an educated assessment of President Donald Trump for a new book. In an interview with Salon, Dodes explained the consensus among the professors is that “the evidence suggesting that Donald Trump may have serious mental health problems is overwhelming.”

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton on Duty to Warn: Trump’s “Relation to Reality” is Dangerous to Us All

No other medical practitioner is restricted by confidentiality the way psychiatrists are, but Trump is no one’s patient. Many trained in mental health can observe Trump and match his speech and behavior patterns to specific disorders. That’s as far as anyone can go without doing an actual in-person exam of Trump.

Dodes began with a diagnosis of “antisocial personality” and the qualities that people who have that exhibit. Comparing it to Trump, he thinks this is one of Trump’s problems.

“It is people who lie and cheat,” Dodes explained as part of the qualities Trump exhibits. “Everybody lies some of the time, but in this instance we mean people who lie as a way of being in the world, to manage relationships and also to manage your feelings about yourself. People who cheat and steal from others. People who lack empathy … the lack of empathy is a critical aspect of it. People who are narcissistic.”

He went on to say that Trump’s case of “malignant narcissism” is particularly acute because he also seems detached from reality when he is agitated. An example is Trump’s boasting of his crowd size being the largest in history, despite proof to the contrary.

“That is very troublesome because what it means is that he needs to believe it,” Dodes told Salon. “He is able to give up reality in exchange for his wished-for belief. Sometimes we call that a delusion.”

He said that in the past many have refrained from using the word “delusional” to describe Trump because it can be confused with people who think they’re the Queen of England or the second coming of Christ. However, “Trump has a fluid sense of reality, which is a sign of a very sick individual,” Dodes said.

Sociopathy is another sign of a mentally ill person. The intersection of cheating, lying and having an emotional disorder typically converge to sociopathy.

“It is not just bad behavior that people have to lie and cheat the way he does, it is an incapacity to treat other people as full human beings,” Dodes said. “That is why his focus is on humiliating others to aggrandize himself, as he did in the Republican primaries when he was debating and calling people names.”

Trump has done the same with women, LGBT people, immigrants, those with special needs and others. Part of being a human being is seeing the plight of others and feeling something. When Trump fails to see the harm in separating immigrants from children it shows his lack of empathy.

Trump manages to score supporters regardless and Dodes explained this is because many search for strong leaders while others are suspicious of them.

“As children, we all want to believe that our parents are good and strong and great and will protect us forever,” he told Salon. “So if you have someone who comes along say, ‘I am good and strong and great and I will protect you forever,’ a certain number of people will follow that person.” For many, Trump is the strong parent being attacked by media or Democrats and they want to protect him.

People trust that they’ll speak up for him, the problem, according to Dodes, is that Trump is a liar, so it’s “a one-sided bargain.”

“Trump is a very primitive man. He is also a man who has a fundamental, deep psychological defect,” he said. “It is expressed in his inability to empathize with others and his lack of genuine loyalty to anyone. You will notice that Trump wants everyone to be loyal to him, but he is loyal to nobody.”

Being a narcissist doesn’t make someone evil or dangerous, according to Dodes, but Trump’s other questionable qualities are what make it concerning and defines it as “malignant.”

As for how this all ends for Trump, Dodes has two possible scenarios for the presidency. First, if there’s a “Reichstag fire”-type event that Trump can use to attack his opposition, the country will rally around him. Dodes thinks it will be North Korea and he’ll end up dropping bombs on the country and the dominoes will begin to fall in Asia.

The second piece involves the Republican Party and the point at which they abandon Trump to preserve their own political careers. They’ll either invoke the 25th Amendment or impeach him. If that happens, Dodes thinks Trump will “cut bait” and leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

“Trump will resign and say, ‘I am still the best and the only savior, and these evil people and their evil media have forced me out,’” Dodes told Salon. “He will keep his constituency, he’ll leave with honor in his own mind and by the way, keep his businesses.”

Is Sen. Bob Corker responsible for the Iran deal, as Donald Trump claims? POLITIFACT By John Kruzelon Thursday, October 12th, 2017President Donald Trump escalated a war of words with Sen. Bob Corker by blaming the Tennessee Republican for the Iran nuclear deal Trump has long derided……..

“Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal,” Trump wrote in an Oct. 8 tweet, hours after Corker tweeted that the White House “has become an adult day care center.”

We decided to take a closer look at Corker’s role in the brokering the agreement.

Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act

Trump’s claim is contradicted by the fact Corker vocally opposed the deal that would eventually emerge from negotiations with Iran in July 2015, and urged Republican colleagues to oppose it, too.

The deal “leaves the United States vulnerable to a resurgent Iran wealthier and more able to work its will in the Middle East,” Corker wrote in an August 2015 opinion piece in the Washington Post. “Congress should reject this deal and send it back to the president.”

Corker himself voted against the deal, though Republicans ultimately lacked the votes to reject it.

When asked how Trump could say that Corker was responsible for the deal, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said a bill Corker sponsored paved the way for the Iran deal and gave it credibility.

“Sen. Corker worked with (Democratic House Leader) Nancy Pelosi and the Obama administration to pave the way for that legislation, and basically rolled out the red carpet for the Iran deal,” she said in an Oct. 10 press briefing, adding, “He not only allowed the deal to happen, he gave it credibility.”

The legislation Sanders was referring to is the Corker-sponsored Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. After initial resistance from President Barack Obama, the bill passed with overwhelming majorities in both chambers, and was signed into law in May 2015.

Corker’s office described the law as enhancing Congress’ authority to review any nuclear agreement with Iran before allowing a president to lift congressionally-imposed sanctions.

So if Corker’s law aimed to give Congress more say over the agreement, what to make of the Trump administration’s assertion that it paved the way for the deal?

“This is astonishingly wrong,” said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar on global energy policy at Columbia University, who previously served as the lead sanctions expert for the U.S. team negotiating with Iran during the administration of President Barack Obama. “The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act gave Congress the most direct way of killing the deal, quickly and easily.”

Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, also said the Trump administration was way off the mark.

“It is ludicrous to argue that Senator Corker and Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act are responsible for delivering the nuclear deal with Iran,” she said. “If anything, (the law) nearly prevented the deal’s implementation and undermined the agreement.”……..

Our ruling

Trump said, “Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal.”

Corker sponsored legislation to enhance Congress’ authority to review the Iran nuclear deal before allowing the president to lift congressionally-imposed sanctions. He also vocally opposed the deal, urged lawmakers to reject the agreement and voted against it.

We don’t see how this could reasonably be construed as Corker giving the United States the Iran deal. Trump’s claim doesn’t make logical sense.

Inside Trump’s Head: An Exclusive Interview With the President, And The Single Theory That Explains Everything, By Randall Lane, FORBES STAFF , 12 Oct 17, This story appears in the November 14, 2017 issue of Forbes. If Trump really did call the White House a “dump,” he’s over it. Inside the small West Wing study—where he stacks his papers and takes his meals atop what he calls his “working desk,” the president talks volubly about a chandelier he had installed and the oil paintings of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. He pokes open the door to his pristine private bathroom, a must for the germophobe-in-chief. He takes us outside to see the serene swimming pool. And inside the Oval Office, freshly renovated with drapes, carpet and fixtures that lean heavily on gold, he slides his hand across the same Resolute desk where JFK handled the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan fought the Cold War, adorned with nothing but two telephones and a call button. “This looks very nice,” says the president.

He could as easily be pitching a Trump Tower penthouse or a Doral golf club membership, and over the course of a nearly one-hour interview in the Oval Office, President Trump stays true to the same Citizen Trump form that Forbes has seen for 35 years.

He boasts, with a dose of hyperbole that any student of FDR or even Barack Obama could undercut: “I’ve had just about the most legislation passed of any president, in a nine-month period, that’s ever served. We had over 50 bills passed. I’m not talking about executive orders only, which are very important. I’m talking about bills.”

He counterpunches, in this case firing a shot at Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who reportedly called his boss a moron: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

And above all, he sells: “I also have another bill… an economic-development bill, which I think will be fantastic. Which nobody knows about. Which you are hearing about for the first time… Economic-development incentives for companies. Incentives for companies to be here.” Companies that keep jobs in America get rewarded; those that send operations offshore “get penalized severely.” “It’s both a carrot and a stick,” says the president. “It is an incentive to stay. But it is perhaps even more so—if you leave, it’s going to be very tough for you to think that you’re going to be able to sell your product back into our country.”

And so here we are, the first president to come solely from the private sector, representing the party that for more than a century championed laissez-faire capitalism and free trade, proposing that government punish and reward companies based on where they choose to locate factories and offices. Is the president comfortable with that idea?

“Very comfortable,” he replies. …………..
For Trump, numbers also serve as a pliant tool. American business has fully embraced Big Data, Moneyball -style analytics and machine learning, where figures suggest the best course of action. But Trump, for decades, has boasted about how he conducts his own research—largely anecdotal—and then buys or sells based on instinct. Numbers are then used to justify his gut. He governs exactly that way, sticking with even his most illogical campaign promises—the kind other politicians walk back from once confronted with actual policy decisions, whether making Mexico pay for a border wall when illegal immigration is historically low or pulling the U.S. from the Paris climate accords, despite the fact that compliance is voluntary—citing whatever figures he can to justify his stances. When asked about Russian interference in the election, for example, he notes that he got 306 electoral votes and adds that the Democrats need “an excuse for losing an election that in theory they should have won.” For the greatest-ever American salesman (yes, including P.T. Barnum), statistics serve as marketing grist………..

there’s precious little about running the Trump Organization that provides the kind of experience that it takes to run the ultimate organization in America: the U.S. government. At the Trump Organization, he owns basically everything. There’s no known board of directors, no outside shareholders and no real customer base, save onetime luxury real estate buyers and golf club members. It’s far closer to running a family office than running Wal-Mart……..

Trump does have experience leading public companies, but even then there was only one shareholder who mattered. When Trump controlled 40% of publicly traded Trump Hotels & Casino, he used it to buy a casino he privately owned for $500 million, even though one analyst thought it was worth 20% less. At one point, he also owned more than 10% of Resorts International. He cut a deal with that company that garnered him millions in fees at the expense of other owners. Neither ended well: Trump Hotels filed for bankruptcy (for the first time) in 2004; Resorts had gone bankrupt some years earlier after Trump cashed out……….

Trump intends to run the country more like the Trump Organization in other ways. Much has been made about how slow he’s been to nominate people to key positions. In the State Department, for example, he has failed to put up names for more than half of the comfirmable positions. That’s apparently not an accident.

“I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be—because you don’t need them,” he says. “I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary. They have hundreds of thousands of people.”

1.This Month

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Changing climate change“2040” paints an optimistic picture of the future of the environment

The film focuses on technological and agricultural solutions that are already being implemented to help combat climate change, The Economist Feb 19th 2019

by C.G. | BERLIN ……….In “2040”, a documentary which premiered at the Berlinale, Mr Gameau seeks to wrest hope from the bleak reports of climate change. He was inspired by Project Drawdown, the first comprehensive plan to reverse global warming, and the film is intended as a “virtual letter to his four-year-old daughter to show her an alternative future”. “Many films,” Mr Gameau thinks, are too dystopian, and “paint a future that is really hard to engage and to connect with”. “2040” acknowledges that the Earth has set off down a hazardous path, but focuses on the work that is being done now to steer the right course. What, the film asks, could make 2040 a time worth living in?…. (subscribers only) https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/02/19/2040-paints-an-optimistic-picture-of-the-future-of-the-environment